Inside Education 433, Professor Sonia Cabell on Literacy Education in the Early Years and More (17-12-24)

Presented and produced by Seán Delaney. On this week's podcast I speak to Professor Sonia Cabell who is an associate professor of Reading Education in the School of Teacher Education and the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University. She was a keynote speaker at the Literacy Association of Ireland conference on 9 November 2024. Among the topics we discussed are the following:

How Marcia Invernizzi, co-author of Words their Way introduced her to the idea of doing a doctorate. Laura Justice was her dissertation adviser. She became interested in preventing reading difficulties through interventions in the pre-school to second grade years. More teachers today are consulting original research on literacy than twenty or twenty-five years ago. “If you know better, then you do better.” Teacher education programmes frequently don’t teach student teachers how to consume research. An important trait for teachers to develop is to be curious about what the evidence says about “this” practice and being open to what the evidence says as reported in trusted journals that translate the research well. She recommends The Reading Teacher and The Reading League Journal as sources of accessible reliable information for teachers. She likes Scholastic’s The Science of Reading in Practice series. Don’t make one person a guru. Listen to different voices and compare them. Jeanne Chall refers to the transition of “learning to read to reading to learn” as a stage of development and not as a way to intervene (in the teaching of reading). A good eight-year-old reader would be decoding fluently (their grasp of the alphabetic code continues to increase) so they can focus their attention on what the text means and they should be continuing to develop fluency in their oral reading. Scarborough’s Reading Rope. Strands of language comprehension: Background knowledge, perceptive and expressive vocabulary, verbal reasoning (inferential thinking and abstract thinking), language structures (syntax), and literacy knowledge (understanding different kinds of genres). John Guthrie’s work on Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction. James S. Kim of Harvard University and his (Model of Reading Engagement) MORE assessment. The inextricable link between knowledge and oral language skills and can be built together in young children. In the interactive read-aloud context you are exposing children to the formal language of books, which is critical because of the formal language structure of books (syntax and vocabulary). How to Teach Your Baby to Read By Glenn Doman. Self productivity by Cunha and Heckman. It’s not just where you start in pre-school that counts but the rate of skill growth in oral language and decoding and subsequent writing; skills beget skills in early literacy. “Our ability to read becomes really stable, really early.” “There is power in setting the stage and setting the stage early.” She would like to see all teachers, including early years teachers, getting the respect and professionalism they deserve Her realisation of the importance of oral language. The “strive for five” framework, developed with Tricia Zucker. How do we help teachers have conversations with students that are meaningful and that expand students’ language in ways.

Teacher asks an open-ended question (turn 1) Student responds Teacher can scaffold upwards and provide more challenge through another question or scaffolds downwards, and use an either/or question or similar. This third step is the most critical turn in the sequence. Student responds Teacher wraps it up

Revoicing Phrase “Strive for Five” was coined by David Dickinson When implementing the CHAT programme (Children and Teachers together led by Laura Justice) When teachers tried to become conversationally responsive partners, teachers could change some aspects of their language use but the things that were more difficult to change were some of the most important aspects that needed to change. Th